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MONROE, MOSES, businessman and politician; b. 1842 in Moira (Northern Ireland), son of John Monroe; m. 16 May 1871 Jessie Gordon McMurdo in St John's; d. there 19 May 1895.
Moses Monroe received his early education in Armagh and Galway and then worked for a clothing manufacturer near his home. At the urging of his uncle, Presbyterian minister Moses Harvey*, he emigrated to St John's in 1860 and became a dry-goods clerk with the firm of McBride and Kerr, which after 1864 was managed by James Goodfellow. Goodfellow purchased this company in 1869, and the following year he took Monroe as a junior partner. The two men had a disagreement and on 31 Dec. 1872 Goodfellow dissolved the partnership, claiming that Monroe had falsified the prices on goods sold by the firm. Goodfellow refused offers of mediation from Harvey, but the disagreement had no long-term detrimental effect on his friendship with Monroe, whose standing in the business community remained untarnished. In 1873 Monroe established his own dry-goods and fisheries-supply business. The necessary capital may have come from his father-in-law, Thomas McMurdo, a prosperous drugstore owner.
The firm of M. Monroe proved a success, supplying merchants and fishermen throughout the island and in Labrador. By 1890, however, Monroe had almost withdrawn from the Labrador fishery because the cure of fish was of such poor quality that it had become uneconomical [see Robert Stewart Munn]. About 1875 Monroe became involved in the bank fishery, prosecuted mainly from the Burin peninsula, through the hiring of ships and their crews. In 1885, for instance, he outfitted 12 vessels with a total of 120 men; four years later this number had risen to 40 vessels carrying 500 men, who caught 30,000 quintals of fish valued at $126,000. Monroe never actively pursued the fish export business, but he did invest with other merchants in west-coast lobster factories.
Monroe's business interests also centred around the promotion of marine-related industries in St John's during the late 1870s and the 1880s. Although he was reputed to have investments in many joint-stock companies, his major interests lay in the Newfoundland Boot and Shoe Manufacturing Company (1875), the Newfoundland Pioneer Woolen Company (1881), the Colonial Cordage Company (1882), the St John's Electric Light Company (1885), and the Atlantic Building Company (1885). However, it was his involvement with the Colonial Cordage Company (the "Ropewalk") that earned him the name of "Monopolist Monroe" from his political opponents.
Prior to 1882, the local fishery had depended upon imported lines, twines, nets, cordage, and cable. Merchants experienced great difficulties in maintaining their supply in the early 1880s, and James J. Rogerson* and Ambrose Shea* approached Monroe to start a local twine and net factory. Not being familiar with this industry, Monroe offered to form a copartnership with the English firm Joseph Grundy and Company. After Grundy refused, Moses and his brother James H., who came out from Ireland to manage the business, in 1882 invested $80,000 to construct the factory. Between 1883 and 1885 the Ropewalk employed about 180 people and was thus one of the largest local employers of wage labour. In the late 1880s Monroe established the Monroe Fibre Company in the Bahamas on the advice of Shea, who had become governor there.
The immediate success of the Ropewalk owed much to the protectionist policies of the Conservative government of Sir William Vallance Whiteway*, which in 1882 gave the business a five-year exemption from import duties and a five per cent bounty on imported raw materials. The company also benefited from an eight per cent tariff duty, first instituted in 1871, on imported twines, cables, and cordage. The Colonial Cordage Company was established in 1883 as a joint-stock company with a nominal capital stock offering of $120,000, of which $96,000 was raised by the end of the year. Shareholders included many of the island's leading business and political figures such as Charles R. Bowring*, Robert Thorburn*, and Premier Whiteway. The Monroe brothers were the largest investors with $60,000 in the company.
Disaster struck the Ropewalk on 23 Dec. 1885, when fire destroyed the frame factory, which had little insurance coverage. With further government assistance, it was rebuilt the following year, this time with stone and brick. Monroe persuaded Thorburn's recently elected government to increase the bounty paid the Ropewalk to seven and a half per cent and continue it until the end of 1895. In 1886 the tariff on imported cordage and related products was increased to ten per cent. On 23 February that year the Colonial Cordage Company was re-incorporated with a nominal capital stock of $160,000, $120,000 of which was paid up within the first year. For local shareholders the Ropewalk represented a secure investment, and its importance as a source of employment gave Monroe considerable political influence in the west end of town, where many of the employees lived.
Monroe's prominence in business and politics had been recognized on 19 Feb. 1884, when Whiteway appointed him to the Legislative Council. As a councillor he took such unpopular stands as supporting a nondenominational system of education and opposing legislation that favoured local option on the liquor trade. In 1885 he served as an intermediary in Whiteway's efforts to form a political coalition with either the Roman Catholic Liberal party led by Shea or a mercantile Protestant party led by Thorburn. The mercantile party did not share Whiteway's and Monroe's vision of a transinsular railway to develop resources that purportedly existed in the interior and on the west coast, areas where Monroe had speculative timber and mineral interests. Moreover, in early 1885 Thorburn's supporters had carefully exploited sectarian antagonisms, which had developed out of a recent violent confrontation between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Harbour Grace [see Robert John Kent], so as to force the Whiteway government to amend the throne speech in such an overtly anti-Catholic manner that the Liberals were compelled to withdraw from it.
In anticipation of an autumn general election Whiteway, with Monroe's help, attempted a reconciliation first with the Liberals and then with the Protestant party, without success. Finally, in October Whiteway struck a deal with Thorburn whereby he resigned the premiership in favour of Thorburn, who would then lead an all-Protestant party in the general election to be held on 31 October. In return Whiteway would be offered the position of chief justice when that office became vacant, a promise that was never kept. Thorburn easily won the election, campaigning on a platform of "no amalgamation with the Catholics," at the same time intimating to senior Liberal politicians that such a coalition would be desirable after the election. Monroe remained loyal to Whiteway and supported the candidacy of independent Alfred Bishop Morine*, a Whiteway supporter and a close personal friend, who ran unsuccessfully in the Protestant district of Bonavista.
During much of the tenure of the Thorburn government, from 1885 to 1889, Monroe maintained an independent position, without making an open public break with Whiteway. In 1887 he criticized Thorburn's decision, despite his election promise of no more railway construction, to build a branch railway to Placentia. This railway had been part of a coalition agreement whereby some senior Roman Catholics had supported Thorburn in return for the appointment, made in July 1886, of Maurice Fenelon and William J. S. Donnelly to the Executive Council. The remaining Liberal members in the House of Assembly, under the leadership of St John's West mha Patrick J. Scott, continued in opposition but supported Thorburn's policies. Other opposition members in the assembly by 1887 included two Whiteway supporters and one independent, Edward Patrick Morris*, a young populist Roman Catholic lawyer elected in 1885 as one of three representatives for St John's West. After 1889 Morris would become a rival of Monroe for the political allegiance of voters in the west end of the city.
Monroe's formal break with Whiteway came in the 1889 general election. On this occasion he tried unsuccessfully to defeat the Morris-led Whiteway candidates, who now called themselves Liberals. However, the real break with Whiteway may actually have occurred a year earlier when on 30 August Monroe won election as councillor for ward 3 on the recently established municipal council. His campaign organization had been put together with Scott's help. The seven-member council included two government appointees, one of whom was the chairman, James Goodfellow. Monroe quickly established his presence and dominated council affairs. Within two months of the council's taking office, a Whiteway-inspired civic reform movement developed, which was critical of municipal patronage appointments and the contract the council had made for lighting the city. Since Monroe was the secretary of the St John's Electric Light Company, he came in for particular public condemnation. As a municipal councillor from 1888 to 1892, he was frequently embroiled in public controversy with Morris; both claimed credit for civic works and sought to use the council for their own political ends. Consequently, the government press constantly criticized the "bounty-fed" Monroe for having enriched himself at the "expense of the working classes of the whole community" while his employees, especially the women and children, worked at the Ropewalk for "starvation wages." He did not seek re-election to the council in the civic election held on 23 Jan. 1892, stepping aside to permit Goodfellow to run successfully for his former seat against a Morris-backed candidate.
After 1890 Monroe remained a critic of Whiteway's Liberal government in the Legislative Council, while at the same time dissociating himself from the policies of the former Thorburn government. Although there was no formal opposition party, Monroe was generally acknowledged as a leading opponent of the government and a strong financial backer of the opposition Evening Herald, edited by Morine, a staunch confederate. Monroe was not a known confederate himself, but he favoured reciprocal relations with both the United States and Canada.
In 1890 Morine and Monroe helped to spark widespread protest throughout Newfoundland against a modus vivendi concerning French fishing rights on the island's west coast reached by the British government with France earlier that year. Under this agreement Britain consented to prohibit the establishment by Newfoundlanders of any new lobster factories on the French Shore. Premier Whiteway had been prepared to accept this modus in return for imperial financial assistance to complete railway construction across the island. However, the tories, now styling themselves the Patriotic Association, held meetings denouncing the agreement and Whiteway fell in line. Meanwhile the British government found that it had no statutory authority to enforce French fishing rights and introduced enabling legislation.
To prevent this move, the Newfoundland legislature sent an all-party delegation to London in April 1891 to argue the colony's position. The mandate of the delegation was such that, when a majority of its members agreed to a settlement, the rest would be bound to support a majority recommendation to the legislature. Monroe and Morine were selected to represent the opposition, and the Liberals were Whiteway himself, Augustus W. Harvey*, and George Henry Emerson. They found the British unwilling to withdraw the bill until the delegates agreed to have permanent legislation enacted in Newfoundland. Consequently, they recommended to the legislature a compromise whereby temporary legislation would be passed enforcing the fishing rights to the end of 1893 in return for the withdrawal of the British bill. On the basis of this understanding, the legislature would then be required to enact permanent legislation providing for continued enforcement by local courts. Whiteway stayed in London to negotiate the terms for the permanent legislation, and the other delegates returned home. Morine and Monroe played a significant role in persuading their fellow legislators to adopt the temporary legislation. However, the bill Whiteway agreed on with the Colonial Office allowed for the enforcement of French fishing rights under imperial jurisdiction and courts. When he presented it to the assembly in 1892, it was strongly condemned by Morine and Monroe as a repudiation of the bill the delegates had consented to in London the previous year, a view supported by Emerson. Faced with this argument, a majority of Whiteway's own supporters rejected his bill. They shared Monroe's view that permanent legislation was really unnecessary and that the colony should withhold any further action on the matter until the French recognized Newfoundland's right to have lobster factories on the west coast. The result was a series of temporary bills until 1904, when France agreed to surrender its fishing rights on the island as part of a larger Anglo-French colonial agreement.
Local politics were further inflamed in 1892 following a fire on 8–9 July, which destroyed the eastern and central parts of St John's. The debate over rebuilding turned strongly partisan when the legislature dealt with the contentious issue of land tenure in the burnt-out areas. The problem was that, after the fire in 1846 that had destroyed much of St John's, absentee landlords, who lived mainly in Great Britain and owned much of the valuable commercial and residential land in the city, had taken advantage of the situation to exact exorbitant rents and give short-term, 40-year leases. Tenants were placed at a disadvantage because, at the expiry of a lease, landed property reverted to the landlord, who then dictated the renewal terms. Monroe was not burnt out in the 1892 fire, but the following year he had to renegotiate the lease to his Water Street property and he hoped to use the opportunity provided by the fire to his advantage. Twelve days after the conflagration prominent leaseholders met in his store and decided to form the Tenants' League, which would pressure the Whiteway government to establish a land court to adjudicate fair and equitable rents upon appeal by a lessee. The court would be modelled on the Irish land court headed by Moses's brother John. Moses wanted the right of appeal to the local court to extend not only to leases terminated by the fire but also to those that would expire in the near future. However, Whiteway, himself an agent for absentee landlords, rejected the proposal believing that property owners and tenants could best deal with their own affairs. Instead, Monroe had to settle for government legislation providing incentives for landlords to grant 99-year leases and thus be free from having to compensate tenants for any improvements made to the property during the life of such a term.
The other major issue arising out of the 1892 fire was the large surplus revenue the colony had received from tariffs as a result of the sudden increase in imported building supplies that the fire had necessitated. On 30 September Monroe convened a public meeting to support the position of the tory-controlled municipal council that this additional revenue be given to the financially beleaguered council. Needless to say, the government turned a deaf ear to this appeal, although Monroe and his tory colleagues continued to make the surplus revenue a political issue with which to beat the government.
The reason was that 1893 was an election year, and the government quickly made Monroe himself and the Ropewalk one of the issues. Specifically, as the unofficial tory leader, he was criticized for having profiteered from the sale of goods and provisions for fire relief, a charge that the governing Liberals failed to substantiate. After considerable speculation as to who would lead the opposition in the election, to be held on 6 November, the tories held a public meeting on 16 June in St John's to announce the formation of the Grieve–Monroe party, named in honour of the co-leaders, St John's merchant Walter Baine Grieve and Monroe. The leaders condemned the government for its past neglect of the fisheries and its weak actions in protecting local interests on the west coast against the French. They also attacked the railway contract Whiteway had signed earlier in 1893 with Robert Gillespie Reid*, the Canadian contractor the colony had hired to operate the Placentia railway and complete construction of the main line to the west coast. Monroe opposed not the building of the railway but the terms of the contract, because it gave away too much of the colony's resources in return for a ten-year operating contract. He headed the three-man tory ticket, which also included P. J. Scott, against Morris and his colleagues in St John's West. As historian Daniel Woodley Prowse*, a Whiteway supporter, noted at the time, both Morris and Monroe campaigned vigorously: Monroe, "one of the ablest politicians in the island, conducted his own election in the west end of St John's with immense spirit, leaving no stone unturned to gain his seat." Both parties provided employment and alcohol to prospective voters; indeed, one Morris demonstration was referred to by the Monroe faction as the "Wild West Show" in contrast to their own "People's Parade."
Monroe failed in his first try at colonial politics as the Liberals easily won re-election. The opposition did not take defeat lightly and on 6 Jan. 1894 filed petitions in the Supreme Court under the Corrupt Practices Act of 1889 charging 17 government members with the illegal use of public funds during the campaign. Subsequent judgements of the court led to the unseating of Whiteway, Morris, and other members, which in turn forced the resignation of the government and the formation of a new one led by tory merchant Augustus Frederick Goodridge. His parliamentary majority depended on the return of tory candidates in by-elections held later in the year in those districts left vacant by the unseated Liberals.
Monroe, who had been reappointed to the Legislative Council in August, on 16 October unsuccessfully contested Whiteway's former district of Trinity. The decision to run in Trinity took Morris by surprise. He tried to reach Monroe, none the less, by publishing in the weekly outport edition of the Evening Telegram the details of "one of the foulest plots ever hatched by the most unscrupulous politician." Morris asserted that in March that year Monroe had sent an employee to see him in the hope that Morris would use government influence to have the Ropewalk bounty extended after its expiry in 1895. He had not made this information available before, Morris wrote, because he was "patiently waiting till the time when Mr. Monroe would come to St. John's for Election, when I should have confronted him publicly with the instrument of his perfidy." James Monroe defended his brother against this attack, denying Morris's charges that James had used coercion to secure a published retraction of the employee's statement. James also denied that the employee was drunk at the time of the retraction.
On 10 Dec. 1894 – "black Monday" – the political chaos of the past several months gave way to problems created by the collapse of the island's two private banks [see James Goodfellow]. A subsequent public investigation showed that the banks' directors had overextended their credit in making large loans to themselves and other export merchants. Two days after the collapse Monroe, not one of the merchants who had followed this borrowing practice, wrote to the press that he had arranged for the Bank of Nova Scotia to establish a branch in St John's. He also cautioned the public that it was "not the time for recrimination or abuse" for "there will be ample time later on for enquiry and punishment if desired." With the immediate assistance of outside banks, Monroe believed, many of the mercantile firms would indeed be solvent if their owners were given time by their creditors to realize their assets. His suggestion was not generally followed and a large number of firms found themselves placed in trusteeships. Monroe managed to avoid this situation by agreeing with his creditors to pay off his debts in full if permitted sufficient time. This he did, but he nearly depleted his financial resources and saw his health rapidly deteriorate. When his estate was probated three months after his death in May 1895, it was valued at only $10,500, much of which, no doubt, represented his shares in the Colonial Cordage Company. On 8 February Monroe had left for a holiday in his native Ireland for health reasons. Greatly improved, he returned to Newfoundland on 19 April. Despite having apparently fully recovered, on 19 May he suffered another stroke and died suddenly.
Monroe's death took the whole community by surprise. When the House of Assembly met the following day, friend and foe alike praised him and then adjourned in his honour. Morine, his long-time friend and solicitor, was "so much overcome by his feelings that he was forced to resume his seat." For Morris, Monroe's "opponents in political life found in him one worthy of their steel, and in a fight you quickly recognized that if you were to win, every tactic and the most skilful manœuver must be availed of." However, "when the battle was over and the fight ended, the nobility of the man's character shone forth, and whether victor or vanquished, the big heart longed for reconciliation." Two years later residents of St John's established a memorial to him in Victoria Park, which he had helped to set up during his term as a municipal councillor. Its inscription in part reads: "Erected by voluntary subscriptions of all classes and denominations in the island, in token of the respect and esteem with which they cherish his memory."
PANL, GN 2/1/A, 1883–93; GN 9/1, 1860–95; P5/4; P8/A/25, reg. of marriages, 16 May 1871 (mfm.). PRO, CO 199/80–90 (copy at PANL). Supreme Court of Newfoundland (St John's), Registry, 4: 74 (will of Thomas McMurdo); 6: 224 (will of Moses Munro) (mfm. at PANL). [T. R.] Bennett, Report of judge Bennett, together with evidence respecting bait protection service, 1890 (St John's, 1891). Decisions of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland, ed. E. P. Morris et al. (14v., St John's, 1897–1954). Nfld., House of Assembly, Journal, 1860–95; Legislative Council, Journal, 1860–95. Colonist (St John's), 1886–92. Daily News (St John's), 1894–95, esp. 20 May 1895. Evening Herald (St John's), 1890–95. Evening Mercury (St. John's), 1885–89. Evening Telegram (St John's), 1883–95. Times and General Commercial Gazette (St John's), 1882–87. Nfld. men (Mott), 55. Melvin Baker, "The government of St. John's, Newfoundland, 1800–1921" (phd thesis, Univ. of Western Ont., London, 1981). Hiller, "Hist. of Nfld." J. L. Joy, "The growth and development of trades and manufacturing in St. John's, 1870–1914" (ma thesis, Memorial Univ. of Nfld., St John's, 1977). Keith Matthews, Profiles of Water Street merchants (mimeograph, [St. John's], 1980). D. W. Prowse, A history of Newfoundland from the English, colonial, and foreign records (London and New York, 1895; repr. Belleville, Ont., 1972). F. F. Thompson, The French Shore problem in Newfoundland: an imperial study (Toronto, 1961). Melvin Baker, "The influence of absentee landlordism on the development of municipal government in 19th century St. John's," Newfoundland Quarterly (St John's), 81 (1985–86), no.2: 19–25.
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Melvin Baker, "MONROE, MOSES," in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 12, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed February 21, 2024, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/monroe_moses_12E.html.
The citation above shows the format for footnotes and endnotes according to the Chicago manual of style (16th edition). Information to be used in other citation formats:
Permalink: | http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/monroe_moses_12E.html |
Author of Article: | Melvin Baker |
Title of Article: | MONROE, MOSES |
Publication Name: | Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 12 |
Publisher: | University of Toronto/Université Laval |
Year of publication: | 1990 |
Year of revision: | 1990 |
Access Date: | February 21, 2024 |


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Serbia's The Stone have returned with a new recording which shows the music going into more of a dark style of black metal and this is a review of their 2017 album "Teatar Apsurda" which was released by Mizantropean Records.
A very fast and raw sound starts off the album along with a great amount of tremolo picking and blast beats while all of the musical instruments on the recording have a very powerful sound to them while the vocals are mostly deep black metal screams and the music is very heavily rooted in the mid 90's.
When guitar solos and leads are utilized they are done in a very melodic style while the songs also bring in a great mixture of slow, mid paced and fast parts along with the riffs also bringing in a great amount of dark sounding melodies as well as some tracks being very long and epic in length, acoustic guitars, melodic chants and atmospheric synths can also be heard in certain sections of the recording.
On this recording The Stone plays a style of black metal that is very dark, atmospheric, raw and melodic sounding, the production sounds very professional while the lyrics are written in Serbian and cover nihilism, death and misanthropy themes.
In my opinion this is another great sounding recording from The Stone and if you are a fan of dark, raw, melodic and atmospheric black metal, you should check out this album. RECOMMENDED TRACKS INCLUDE "Gavranovo" "Nuklearan" and "Teatar Apsurda". 8 out of 10.

subset: commoncrawl


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Dev Build 2132 is out now, with buttons in the gutter for folding indented regions. You can disable them with the new fold_buttons file setting.
There's also a fix for a long standing issue that was tripping up SublimeCodeIntel: previously, hiding the auto complete window from an on_modified callback could cause memory corruption, when the on_modified callback was triggered from the auto complete window itself. Doing this will now no longer cause any issues. Please let me know if you still experience any crashes when using SublimeCodeIntel with 2132.


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While Monday's ISM Manufacturing Index came in near expectations, it was the highest reading since May 2010. Production showed healthy gains moving from 55 to 60.7. New orders also gained 4.3 points moving to a bullish 60.9. Eleven of the eighteen industries reported growth. According to the ISM, December's index level historically has been associated with real GDP growth of 5.0%.
This morning's Wall Street Journal summed up Monday's trading this way:
Fueling the gains were reports that factory activity ratcheted up world-wide, with the U.S., Europe's major economies, Brazil and South Korea posting their best numbers in more than six months. Stocks in those markets all surged, while commodities raced higher on the accelerating global economic recovery. Copper reached a fresh all-time high.
With some positive fundamentals in the hopper, it is a good time to look at where stocks may be headed. In the U.S. on Monday, the S&P 500 futures closed above 1,256, making the 1,270 to 1,272 range the next short-term hurdle for stocks. The charts below help us determine reasonable upside targets given the current fundamental and technical state of the markets. The timing, in terms of when stocks might reach the next set of probable targets, is uncertain. The market could experience a corrective period prior to reaching 1,313 or 1,326. It may not hit 1,326 for several months, but the odds are good it will hit 1,326 sometime in the next six to nine months.
The weekly chart below identifies possible areas where both short-term buyers (support) and short-term sellers (resistance) may become interested. These are not full-year 2011 targets; they represent the next logical milestones for stocks given what we know today. Stocks could exceed these levels later in 2011.
The monthly chart below takes more noise out of the equation in the form of day-to-day volatility. The chart contains two parallel trend channels (A & B) that may influence the decisions of buyers and sellers later in 2011. It is probable sometime in 2011, possibly after some consolidation or corrective activity; the S&P 500 will fill the white space noted in the chart below. We cover similar concepts in our 2011 Stock Market Outlook, which was released in December 2010.
The CCM Bull Market Sustainability Index (BMSI) closed Monday at 3,745, which from a historical perspective gives us a favorable risk-reward profile for stocks over the next two to twelve months (see table below). The term risk-reward speaks to the probabilistic nature of technical analysis and our market models.
The CCM 80-20 Correction Index (80-20) is not flashing red at the moment. However, the 80-20 Index has entered the yellow zone telling us we need to be ready for some corrective activity sometime in the not-too-distant future.
For readers who are understandably concerned about the elevated levels of bullish sentiment, this sentiment study is worth a scan. The current bull/bear ratio is 2.78 (the study was done at a ratio of 2.77).


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Pros: Performs as advertised; keeps the Click Wheel protected in a minimal way. The free included screen protector is a bit fiddly to fit but once on is not noticeable on the iPod mini, marginally so on the 4G iPod.
Cons: $9 per set seems steep, but not so bad given competing options and included shipping.
White Click Wheels can get dirty, as evidenced by iPods on display in stores and in our personal use. Having tested Power Support's Crystal Film and Wheel Film already, we wanted to look at another minimalist way to protect current model iPods' screens and Click Wheels, and opted to try the new iPoDonuts introduced by Japanese company Frontfield.
After six days shipping from Japan, a plain "donut" arrived for our test iPod mini, plus one for our 4G iPod's Click Wheel. The two "donuts" and two screen protectors cost $18 in total, travelling from Japan in a 235mm x 120mm envelope. It's no wonder the that packing and postage is included in the price.
The iPoDonut protectors for the iPod mini are made from silicone and stick on the Click Wheel using a silicone-based adhesive. They have a slight green tinge not especially noticeable under normal light, which is attributable to the luminescent material from which they are made. Once the lights go down, the iPoDonuts glow for some time; Frontfield claims that they will glow for up to eight hours after 30 mins of exposure to light.
On the 4G iPod, the donut covers up the grey Click Wheel quite nicely.
For those who wish they could have a 4G that's stylistically more in keeping with the 3G iPod's Scroll Wheel, the iPoDonut may be a good way to achieve this. The 4G donut has a very faint green tinge that's not as obvious on the grey Click Wheel.
Fitting the iPoDonuts is fairly easy. A steady hand and eye is needed to get the donut shape to match precisely on the iPod's wheel, and it took us two or three attempts to actually get one fitted to our satisfaction. The fact that the 4G's Click Wheel depresses below the rim of the wheel opening can aid getting it on straight. On the iPod mini, the donut becomes almost flush with the mini's metal body, while on the 4G it is raised very slightly above the front face of the iPod. If the iPoDonut is used with an accessory case, its raised edge is still below the actual Click Wheel opening.
The free screen protectors are small sheets which seem to adhere to the LCD screens using the same silicone-based adhesive as the iPoDonuts. On the iPod mini, the screen is slightly recessed below the front face of the metal shell, so sliding the screen protector squarely into place was easy – on our first attempt, it dropped into place.
A quick wipe with a soft cloth removed any bubbles, and it was done. With screen and Wheel covered, the delicate parts of the iPod mini were pretty much protected.
On the 4G iPod, the experience was different. As the screen on the 4G is actually encased underneath acrylic plastic, the film protector lies on top of the LCD screen. The actual protector is slightly taller than the iPod screen, so getting it to fit squarely was a slightly more fiddly and frustrating operation. We found that the slightest piece of dust caused the protector to bubble and not adhere properly to the iPod LCD screen, and had to find the offending speck of dirt and remove it. Next, a fine hair would appear. A sterile room may be the best place to fit this, as wiping the iPod gives it a slight static charge which will attract the slightest bit of fluff or dust.
Eventually, we fit the protector properly, and found that a small piece of scotch tape dabbed onto the sticky side of the protector was the best way to remove any dust or fluff.
So, are the iPoDonut accessories worth the money? Well, if you want Click Wheel protection that doesn't detract from the look of the iPod, then they do the job well.


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Cancer drugs hitch a ride on 'smart' gold nanoshells
Nanoparticles capable of delivering drugs to specifically targeted cancer cells have been created by a group of researchers from China.
The multifunctional 'smart' gold nanoshells could lead to more effective cancer treatments by overcoming a major limitation of modern chemotherapy techniques—the ability to target cancer cells specifically and leave healthy cells untouched.
Small peptides situated on the surface of the nanoshells are the key to the improved targeting ability, guiding the nanoshells to specific cancer cells and attaching to markers on the surface of the cells. The acidic environment of the cancer cells then triggers the offloading of the anticancer drugs.
The specific nanostructure of the gold nanoshells could also allow near-infrared light to be absorbed and converted into heat, opening up the possibility of using the nanoshells in targeted hyperthermia treatment—another form of cancer treatment whereby cancer cells are exposed to slightly higher temperatures than usual to destroy them.
The first results of the nanoshells' performance have been published today, 14 February, in IOP Publishing's journal Biomedical Materials.
The researchers, from East China Normal University and Tongji University, used the gold nanoshells as a building block to which they attached the commonly used anticancer drug Doxorubicin (DOX) and a specific peptide known as A54.
The gold nanoshells had diameters of around 200 nanometres—more than 50 times smaller than a red blood cell.
When tested on human liver cancer cells, the uptake of the nanoshells that had the A45 peptide was three times greater than the uptake of the control nanoshells without the peptide. There was also a significantly reduced uptake of both types of nanoshell by normal healthy cells.
The cancer cells were also treated with the gold nanoshells in a heated water bath and were shown to deliver a notable therapeutic effect compared to just the chemotherapy, demonstrating the potential of the hyperthermia treatment.
Lead author of the study Dr Shunying Liu, from East China Normal University, said: "The therapeutic activity of most anticancer drugs is limited by their systematic toxicity to proliferating cells, including some normal cells. Overcoming this problem remains a great challenge for chemotherapy."
"In our study we placed a targeting peptide on the nanoshells, which have been demonstrated to be specific to live cancer cells, improving the targeting ability and drug delivery of the gold nanoshells.
"The next step of our research is to test the 'smart' gold nanoshells in vivo on a liver cancer mouse model. We will also examine how the size of the nanoshells changes their efficacy and how efficient the nanoshells are at converting near-infrared light into heat."
More information: "'Smart' gold nanoshells for combined cancer therapy and hyperthermia" 2014 Biomed. Mater. 9 025012. iopscience.iop.org/1748-605X/9/2/025012
Provided by Institute of Physics


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13th Conference of the Hungarian Skeptics
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- Published: Saturday, 06 February 2010 21:25
About 200 participants attended the 13th Conference of the Hungarian Skeptics at Székesfehérvár this weekend. Based on the on-site survey the best theme was the round table moderated by István Vágó about consumer protection with representatives from consumer and governmental organizations. Erno Duda Jr. received most votes as best performer with his presentation "Does natural mean healthy?".


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Gentle by Front for Porro
Milan 2012: the flexible back of this chair by Swedish designers Front comprises a thick spring wrapped in black leather.
Presented for Italian brand Porro in Milan last week, the Gentle chair has a matching black leather seat but pale wooden front legs, which continue up and around the backrest in one loop to form arms.
Over at Spazio Rossana Orlandi Front also showed a lamp that blows bubbles - check it out in our earlier story and see all our stories about their work here.
The Salone Internazionale del Mobile took place from 17 to 22 April. See all our stories about Milan 2012 here.
Here are some more details from Porro:
Gentle design Front
Stolen from a fairy tale, directly coming from a children book, the result of any dream coming true, the Gentle chair entirely reinterprets the seat archetype, making its shapes far more modern and purified.
If at a first glance it looks like a continuum, a pattern drawing drafted without moving the pencil from the paper, in reality it perfectly hides a complex project, matching metal covered by soft leather at the back legs level, moving up to the back arch, to the light wood of the front legs, becoming the arm and back supports, in a subtle opposite contrast.
The soft back and the leather upholstered seat make the chair "soft" at the touch and at sight, in an harmonic double-coloured optical effect, graphical and retro at the same time, always two colours perfectly and elegantly matched.


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Voice of America to Test Digital Transmissions this Weekend
The Voice of America Radiogram show, hosted by Kim Andrew Elliot, KD9XB, will be testing a variety of digital modes on March 16 and 17.
The data transmissions can be decoded by anyone with an AM shortwave receiver using any of the popular sound-card-based programs such as Fldigi, Ham Radio Deluxe, MixW, MultiPSK, DigiPan (for BPSK31, BPSK63 and QPSK31 only), CocoaModem (for Macs) and others.
Each test will last one minute, unless otherwise specified, on the following modes at the audio frequencies indicated. During some tests as many as four modes will be used simultaneously . . .
- BPSK31 at 2000 Hz
- QPSK31 at 1000 Hz, BPSK31 at 2000 Hz
- QPSK31 at 1000 Hz, PSK63F at 1500 Hz, BPSK31 at 2000 Hz
- QPSK63 on 1000 Hz, PSKR125 at 1500 Hz, BPSK63 at 2000 Hz
- QPSK125 at 1000 Hz, PSKR250 at 1500 Hz, BPSK63 at 2000 Hz
- QPSK250 at 800 Hz, PSKR500 at 1500 Hz, BPSK250 at 2200 Hz
- QPSK500 at 800 Hz, PSKR1000 at 1500 Hz, BPSK500 at 2200 Hz
- PSKR500 at 1000 Hz, PSK63F at 1500 Hz, PSKR125 at 2000 Hz, and PSKR250 at 2500 Hz (5 minutes, 40 seconds total). The latter portions of the PSKR250 and 500 transmissions are formatted for Flmsg, a function within the Fldigi software suite. (In Fldigi, go to Configure > Misc > NBEMS > under "Reception of flmsg files." Click Open with flmsg and Open in browser and select the desired location of the flmsg.exe file.)
- MFSK32 image on 1500 Hz (54 seconds)
The 30-minute Radiogram program is scheduled to air . . .
Saturday 1600 UTC at 17860 kHz
Sunday 0230 UTC at 5745 kHz
Sunday 1300 UTC at 6095 kHz
Sunday 1930 UTC at 15670 kHz
... from the IBB Edward R. Murrow Transmitting Station in North Carolina.
E-mail reception reports are welcomed at email@example.com.
According to Elliot, future VOA Radiogram programs will transmit only one mode at a time. "This will ensure the highest possible signal-to-noise ratio and the best possible chances for a successful decode. These broadcasts are an experiment. We will try different modes in different programs to see which work best via AM analog shortwave broadcast transmitters."


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Home >
News & Policies >
September 2003
For Immediate Release
Office of Lynne Cheney
September 17, 2003
Mrs. Cheney Hosts Constitution Day at the National Constitution Center
National Constitution Center
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Lynne Cheney, author, scholar and wife of Vice President Dick Cheney celebrated Constitution Day here at the National Constitution Center today with 200 elementary school students from Philadelphia schools. Constitution Day: Telling America's Story is Mrs. Cheney's second annual Constitution Day event. The inaugural event took place at the Vice President's Residence in Washington, D.C. in 2002. This year, students commemorated this important day in history just two blocks from Independence Hall, the location of the signing of the U.S. Constitution 216 years ago today (September 17, 1787).
"The Constitution is not only one of our nation's founding documents, it is one of the most influential documents ever written," Mrs. Cheney said. "It's a real privilege to celebrate the anniversary of the Constitution at the National Constitution Center and to help bring the story of this remarkable document to the next generation."
The two-hour event for third, fourth and fifth graders from James Dobson Elementary, Robert Pollock Elementary, and Thomas Mifflin Elementary schools included a welcoming program in the Grand Hall Lobby led by Mrs. Cheney. U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige joined Mrs. Cheney in leading students in the Pledge of Allegiance and spoke to kids about history education. Mrs. Cheney talked about the importance of the founding documents and historical figures throughout history.
National Constitution Center President and CEO Joseph M. Torsella and National Park Service Superintendent Mary Bomar welcomed students to the Constitution Center during the program.
"We are pleased that Mrs. Cheney and these students are here to celebrate Constitution Day with us at the National Constitution Center," said Torsella. "This event speaks directly to the mission of the Center - to teach 'We, the People' about the document that lays out a blueprint for our democracy, powerfully affects our daily lives, and relies on us all to uphold and preserve it."
Mrs. Cheney and students viewed the Constitution Center's multimedia production "Freedom Rising," which tells the story of the Constitution and "We the People" from Revolutionary times to today. Mrs. Cheney and students then enjoyed several interactive displays in the "The American Experience" exhibit, a permanent exhibit that tells the story of the Constitution through 100 interactive and multimedia exhibits, photographs, text and artifacts.
Encouraging young people across the nation to learn about America's history has long been a priority of Mrs. Cheney's. In 2001, she announced plans for a celebration of Constitution Day (September 17) each year to highlight the importance of learning about America's Founding Fathers and documents, as well as, the inspirational figures who have since helped our nation live up to the ideals contained within the Constitution.
"There are few things more important than teaching children the history of our great nation," Mrs. Cheney said, "and there are many ways to do it, from visiting historic sites and museums to reading books to children about the story of America."
Results from the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test in U.S. History showed that 33% of 4th graders performed below the "Basic" level, meaning they are unable to identify the most familiar people, events, ideas, and documents in American history. For students in 12th grade, performance on the test was worse, as 57% were unable to reach the "Basic" level of achievement.
The Constitution Day program closed with the signing of individual copies of the U.S. Constitution provided to each student at a signing party outdoors on the Constitution Center's terrace. Mrs. Cheney, along with special guests (actors) George Washington, James Madison, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and American historical figures Frederick (actual great-great-grandson of Douglass) and Anna Douglass, Abigail Adams and Amelia Earhart joined students for the party. Students visited with the founding fathers and others while listening to the Fife & Drum Corps and enjoying lemonade and flag-decorated cookies.
On September 17, 1787, the final draft of the Constitution was signed in Philadelphia. Although it would be almost a year before the Constitution was ratified by the required nine out of thirteen states (June 21, 1788), this date marks a milestone in our country's history.
Lynne Cheney is the author of seven books including two children's books on American history, America: A Patriotic Primer and A is for Abigail: An Almanac of Amazing American Women. She is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. and wife of Vice President Dick Cheney.
The National Constitution Center, an independent, non-profit, non-partisan institution dedicated to honoring and explaining the Constitution, opened on Philadelphia's historic Independence Mall on July 4, 2003. It is the first of its kind - a modern, interactive, and exciting center in which people from all walks of life are able to learn about the profound impact the Constitution has had in American history and continues to have in all Americans' daily lives.


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Christopher Gibson speaks English, Finnish and French, but has a Latin phrase etched into the back of his goalie mask: "Luctor et Emergo." Literally, this means "I struggle and emerge."
The Kings' first selection in the 2011 Entry Draft, Gibson certainly struggled in his first game in a Kings uniform. Gibson allowed five goals in the third period as the Kings blew a 6-3 lead, losing 8-7 to the Phoenix Coyotes at Toyota Sports Center. The two teams will play again at 2 p.m. today at TSC, completing the two-game exhibition series between the teams.
Gibson wasn't the only prospect who slipped on a Kings uniform for the first time Wednesday. That was a factor in 60 minutes of up-and-down hockey.
"There were a lot of nervous guys in that dressing room," said forward Brandon Kozun, who scored two goals and added an assist on the eve of his third training camp with the Kings.
Continue reading "Kings rookies squander 6-3 lead, lose to Coyotes 8-7." »


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I can vividly remember the day Vatican II went too far. I was 11 years old and serving Mass at my Bronx parish.
It was 1969 -- must have been the 8 a.m. Sunday Mass, because it was celebrated in Italian. I looked out from the altar at pews crowded with older women dressed all in black, small veils pinned to their hair, rosaries in hand, religious medals hanging from their necks like military commendations.
I could barely make out the Italian, but our pastor, Fr. Charles, announced that something big had changed: St. Christopher was no longer considered a real saint, and his July 25 feast would not be celebrated. The faces of the congregation fell as if on cue. A murmur rose, and person after person touched their necks, where St. Christopher medals no doubt hung.
Every car in my neighborhood rode with St. Christopher, patron saint of travelers. In Southern Italy, simply walking rutted roads from one town to the next presented layers of danger -- and St. Christopher provided the protection needed to give people the courage to venture out. But now he was gone.
There was no discussion, there was no consensus -- he was just gone.
I thought about that day while reading Ross Douthat's column in The New York Times, about how the Episcopal church has shrunk into near-irrelevance in the face of a radical leftward tilt. Douthat is one of the brightest conservative observers out there, and I always find his columns thought-provoking -- but this one was a little too pat. Let me explain.
Douthat argues that many mainstream Protestant churches have declined because they have embraced radically liberal notions, and he sets this up as a cautionary tale for Catholics seeking a more liberal face in Rome. The central thesis here is that Christians run away from the left-wing but don't mind the right-wing nearly so much.
But what has diminished Episcopals and other mainstream Protestants is not left versus right -- it is extremism. It is the making of every spiritual moment into a political moment, and it is the same path the church could find itself on just simply from the rightward side of the road.
Douthat points out a few examples of the liberal drift: an Episcopal presiding bishop who waved away membership decline by explaining that her congregants valued "stewardship of the earth too much" to reproduce. He points to Protestant theologians who debate even the most foundational elements of the faith -- including the Resurrection. And he talks about how "the leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies often don't seem to be offering anything you can't already get from a purely secular liberalism."
These are arguments that few Christians of whatever stripe could go against -- but they apply as succinctly to the right-wing. It brings up a lesson that ideologues never seem to learn: Change should be done through consensus. And there is clearly no consensus from the pews about many of the decisions mainstream Protestant churches are making on behalf of their believers.
There was no consensus about St. Christopher, either -- and that small moment at my parish became, I think, a touchstone for many in the pews (especially older congregants) who felt things had gone far enough in the '60s. But the year before, in 1968, the Vatican had done something else without consensus: it forbade the use of contraceptives. And many Catholics looking for the church to be a bit more modern saw that as a regressive move -- many felt a church that seemed to be moving forward with them was now trying to pull them back. Consensus works both ways, from both ends of the political spectrum. The ideological stance is always one of "we know best, you just need to run along behind us," and rarely serves any institution well for long.
Douthat's take is, then, not something the current Vatican should ignore. More and more, the church now seems to be offering little that you "can't already get from a purely" conservative political organization.
That is not want people want, either.


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Palin Falsely Claims Domestic Drilling Is "The Solution" To High Gas Prices
Written by Fae Jencks
Fox News contributor Sarah Palin claimed that "the solution" to rising gas prices is "to drill here and drill now" and argued that recoverable oil and natural gas in the Arctic could make the U.S. "energy independent." In fact, experts have said expanding domestic production of fossil fuels would not shield the U.S. from volatility in the global price of oil.
Palin: "The Solution Is To Drill Here And Drill Now"
Palin: The "Solution" To Rising Gas Prices "Is To Drill Here And Drill Now." From the March 5 edition of Fox News' Justice with Judge Jeanine:
JEANINE PIRRO (host): Summer is not that far away from us and it seems like those oil prices are spiking and the gas is going up every day. What do you think the government should do about these rising prices? Should they start tapping into the strategic oil reserves?
PALIN: That's not the solution. The solution is to drill here and drill now and the Obama anti-oil agenda has got to be stopped now. He needs to realize that back in '08, our US crude also was traded at about $100 a barrel as it is today for about six months and that was right before our world economy imploded. And now here we are back again so his timing, his destructive timing of locking up 97 percent of our offshore and not allowing ANWR to be touched, not allowing domestic drilling to take place to the degree that it should, it is terrifying where he is leading us in terms of being at the mercy of foreign regimes that would seek our demise to produce energy for us. [Fox News, Justice with Judge Jeanine, 3/5/11]
Palin Claims Tapping Arctic Resources Could Make U.S. "Energy Independent." From the show:
PALIN: We have these God-given resources here and we have the manpower and we have the ingenuity to be energy independent. Right above our Arctic Circle, we have 90 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil. We have hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of clean, green natural gas. God has provided these for us. It's our responsibility to responsibly tap into them and use them for mankind and not rely on foreign regimes to do it for us. [Fox News, Justice with Judge Jeanine, 3/5/11]
Experts, DOE Agree Domestic Off-Shore Drilling Won't Substantially Affect Oil, Gas Prices
AEI Scholar: "We Probably Couldn't Produce Enough To Affect The World Price Of Oil." According to a Greenwire article published by the New York Times:
If gas prices keep increasing, Republicans probably will make a push on increased fossil fuel production, said Ken Green, resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute think tank.
But experts disagreed about how much impact additional drilling could have. Crude oil is a global commodity, Green said.
"The world price is the world price," Green said. "Even if we were producing 100 percent of our oil," he said, if prices increase because of a shortage in China or India, "our price would go up to the same thing.
"We probably couldn't produce enough to affect the world price of oil," Green added. "People don't understand that."
U.S. production could be negated by decisions that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries makes, said Philip Verleger Jr., energy economist, and David Mitchell EnCana, professor of management, at the University of Calgary's business school.
"Suppose the U.S. were to boost production 1 million barrels a day," Verleger said. "OPEC has the capacity to cut 1 million barrels."
The oil industry has been able to convince people there is a connection between U.S. drilling and prices, Verleger said. [Greenwire via NYTimes.com, 1/4/11]
PolitiFact: Experts Agree That Expanding Offshore Drilling "Would Have Little Effect At The Pump Any Time Soon." From PolitiFact's evaluation of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's (D-FL) statement that a "5 percent increase in domestic production would increase the world supply by less than 1 percent and do almost nothing to our dependence on foreign oil. This would also have virtually no effect on the price of gas at the pump.":
Background on drilling and gas prices
PolitiFact wrote:
The political momentum for offshore drilling has always risen and fallen along with gas prices. But while there are strong arguments that can be made in favor of offshore drilling, reducing the cost of gas "here and now" isn't one of them, according to oil experts and economists -- many of whom support the plan.
For starters, the lead time for oil exploration takes years. Even if offshore drilling areas opened up tomorrow, experts say it would take at least 10 years to realize any significant production. And even then, they say, the U.S. contribution to the overall global oil market would not be enough to make a significant dent in the price of gas.
"Drilling offshore to lower oil prices is like walking an extra 20 feet per day to lose weight," said David Sandalow, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and author of Freedom from Oil. "It's just not going to make much difference."
We ran Wasserman Schultz's claim by Jamie Webster, a senior consultant with PFC Energy, which tracks oil production and demand globally and whose clients are governments, including the United States., [sic] and oil and gas companies. We also heard from Daniel J. Weiss, who has written extensively about oil prices and policy and is a senior fellow and director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, which describes itself as a progressive think tank. Both Webster and Weiss agreed with Wasserman Schultz.
Let's review: Wasserman Schultz's math adds up -- Gulf drilling does indeed represent about 5 percent of current domestic production, and a 5 percent increase would barely register in terms of the world supply. And the experts we found for this Truth-O-Meter as well as ones cited in the past about McCain's claim agree that expanding drilling now would have little effect at the pump any time soon. We rate this claim True. [PolitiFact.com, 12/1/10, emphasis original]
DOE In 2009: Reinstating Offshore Drilling Ban Would Increase Prices By Merely 3 Cents Per Gallon. From the Department of Energy's 2009 Annual Energy Outlook:
The U.S. offshore is estimated to contain substantial resources of both crude oil and natural gas, but until recently some of the areas of the lower 48 OCS have been under leasing moratoria [56]. The Presidential ban on offshore drilling in portions of the lower 48 OCS was lifted in July 2008, and the Congressional ban was allowed to expire in September 2008, removing regulatory obstacles to development of the Atlantic and Pacific OCS [57, 58].
To examine the potential impacts of reinstating the moratoria, an OCS limited case was developed for AEO2009. It is based on the AEO2009 reference case but assumes that access to the Atlantic, Pacific, and Eastern/Central Gulf of Mexico OCS will be limited again by reinstatement of the moratoria as they existed before July 2008. In the OCS limited case, technically recoverable resources in the OCS total 75 billion barrels of oil and 380 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
The projections in the OCS limited case indicate that reinstatement of the moratoria would decrease domestic production of both oil and natural gas and increase their prices (Table 9). The impact on domestic crude oil production starts just before 2020 and increases through 2030. Cumulatively, domestic crude oil production from 2010 to 2030 is 4.2 percent lower in the OCS limited case than in the reference case. In 2030, lower 48 offshore crude oil production in the OCS limited case (2.2 million barrels per day) is 20.6 percent lower than in the reference case (2.7 million barrels per day), and total domestic crude oil production, at 6.8 million barrels per day, is 7.4 percent lower than in the reference case (Figure 13). In 2007, domestic crude oil production totaled 5.1 million barrels per day.
With limited access to the lower 48 OCS, U.S. dependence on imports increases, and there is a small increase in world oil prices. Oil import dependence in 2030 is 43.4 percent in the OCS limited case, as compared with 40.9 percent in the reference case, and the total annual cost of imported liquid fuels in 2030 is $403.4 billion, 7.1 percent higher than the projection of $376.6 billion in the reference case. The average price of imported low-sulfur crude oil in 2030 (in 2007 dollars) is $1.34 per barrel higher, and the average U.S. price of motor gasoline price is 3 cents per gallon higher, than in the reference case. [U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, accessed 3/7/11]
Bush Administration Energy Department: Additional Offshore Drilling "Would Not Have A Significant Impact" On Crude Oil Prices Before 2030. According to a 2007 report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration:
The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017. Total domestic production of crude oil from 2012 through 2030 in the OCS access case is projected to be 1.6 percent higher than in the reference case, and 3 percent higher in 2030 alone, at 5.6 million barrels per day. For the lower 48 OCS, annual crude oil production in 2030 is projected to be 7 percent higher--2.4 million barrels per day in the OCS access case compared with 2.2 million barrels per day in the reference case (Figure 20). Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant. [U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, accessed 3/7/11]
EIA Analyst: Total Offshore Production Would Amount To "Less Than 1 Percent Of The Total Projected International Consumption" In 2030. From a September 2008 Scientific American article:
So are promises of U.S. oil independence real--or rhetoric? The issue is not whether the U.S. can significantly reduce its reliance on oil imports with domestic, offshore oil, say both [oil expert Robert] Kaufman and [energy researcher Ian] Nathan, but whether there is enough that is recoverable to significantly lower the price of a barrel of oil on the global market.
Even by 2030, offshore drilling would not have a significant impact on oil prices, according to [EIA analyst Phyllis] Martin, because oil prices are determined on the global market. "The amount of total production anticipated--around 200,000 barrels a day--would be less than 1 percent of the total projected international consumption."
And disruptions to the global supply affect the price of every barrel of oil the U.S. purchases, whether it be from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela or off the New Jersey coast. "Suppose the U.S. got all its oil domestically, and the price was $100 a barrel. Then the Saudi family was deposed," disrupting that country's oil exports, Kaufman says. "The Saudis produce about 10 million barrels a day of the world's 85 million, so clearly prices would go up, because now there is this big shortfall of oil."
"Do you think oil companies are going to sell [U.S. oil] to U.S. consumers for anything less than top price?," he asks. "The answer is no." [Scientific American, 9/12/08]
Newsweek: Oil Prices "Determined By Global Supply And Global Demand." From a March 31, 2010, Newsweek commentary by Ben Adler:
Oil, you see, is a fungible global commodity. The oil that one drills for in Texas powers a car the same way that oil from Kuwait does. So the price that Texans pay for oil is determined by global supply and global demand, not how much oil is drilled on the Gulf Coast.
In a market economy such as ours, opening an area for drilling does not mean that the U.S. government controls its destination. Shell and Chevron will be perfectly happy to sell their oil to China if Chinese drivers are willing to pay more than Americans. The U.S. could produce exactly as much gasoline as it consumes and it would still feel the effects of, say, a decision by Hugo Chávez or Vladimir Putin to stop selling any oil. If global supply drops precipitously, global prices will rise, and unless we plan on nationalizing the oil industry--a move I doubt either Democrats or Republicans will endorse--the fact that we are drilling for more oil near our shores won't protect us from the price shock. [Newsweek, 3/31/10]
Other Nations Lay Claim To Arctic Oil And Natural Gas
Bloomberg: One-Third Of The Estimated 90 Billion Barrels Of Oil In Arctic "Is In Alaskan Territory." From a July 2008 Bloomberg article:
The Arctic may hold 90 billion barrels of oil, more than all the known reserves of Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Mexico combined, and enough to supply U.S. demand for 12 years, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
One-third of the undiscovered oil is in Alaskan territory, the agency found in a study released today. By contrast, a geologic formation beneath the North Pole claimed by Russian scientists last year probably holds just 1.2 percent of the Arctic's crude, the U.S. report showed. [Bloomberg, 7/23/08]
43 Of The 61 "Significant" Oil And Gas Fields In The Arctic Are In Russia. According to the New York Times:
The Arctic holds one-fifth of the world's undiscovered, recoverable oil and natural gas, the United States Geological Survey estimates. According to a 2009 report by the Energy Department, 43 of the 61 significant Arctic oil and gas fields are in Russia. The Russian side of the Arctic is particularly rich in natural gas, while the North American side is richer in oil. [New York Times, 2/16/11]
Russia Would Control The "Greatest Share Of Arctic Resource Wealth." According to the Winnipeg Free Press:
The first detailed scientific analysis of potential oil and gas deposits in the Arctic confirms that significant resource wealth could accrue to Canada, the U.S. and other northern nations, but identifies Russia as the biggest winner in the polar petroleum sweepstakes.
The study, headed by the U.S. Geological Survey, follows a high-profile announcement last year by the same agency that the Arctic realm holds almost one-quarter of the world's undiscovered hydrocarbon reserves -- some 90 billion barrels of oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Russia will end up with the greatest share of Arctic resource wealth, though key offshore deposits in boundary waters shared with Norway are already a source of friction between those two countries.
"The largest predicted deposits of undiscovered gas in the region are located in areas of overlapping territorial claims by Russia and Norway," the study states. [Winnipeg Free Press, 5/29/09]
Drilling In Arctic Much Riskier, More Expensive
EIA: "Arctic Oil And Natural Gas Resources Will Be Considerably More Expensive, Risky, And Take Longer To Develop." According to a report on the potential of Arctic oil and natural gas resources prepared by the Oil and Gas division of the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Office of Integrated Analysis and Forecasting:
The Arctic presents a "good news, bad news" situation for oil and natural gas development. The good news is that the Arctic holds about 22 percent of the world's undiscovered conventional oil and natural gas resources, based on the USGS mean estimate. The bad news is that: (1) the Arctic resource base is largely composed of natural gas and natural gas liquids, which are significantly more expensive to transport over long distances than oil; (2) the Arctic oil and natural gas resources will be considerably more expensive, risky, and take longer to develop than comparable deposits found elsewhere in the world; (3) unresolved Arctic sovereignty claims could preclude or substantially delay development of those oil and natural gas resources where economic sovereignty claims overlap; and (4) protecting the Arctic environment will be costly. The high cost and long lead-times of Arctic oil and natural gas development undercut the immediate importance of these sovereignty claims, while at the same time diminishing the economic incentive to develop these resources.
The bottom line for Arctic oil and natural gas potential is that high costs, high risks, and lengthy lead-times can all serve to deter their development in preference to the development of less challenging oil and natural gas resources elsewhere in the world. Also, the less abundant Arctic oil resources will be more readily developed than the Arctic's natural gas resources. [U.S. Energy Information Administration, "Arctic Oil and Natural Gas Potential," 10/09, emphasis added]
Drilling In The Arctic Can Be Several Times More Expensive Than Drilling Elsewhere. According to The Independent:
The vast frozen wastes of the Arctic are one of the few areas not yet fully probed for oil and gas. But not because they lack potential. The US Geological Survey estimates that there are at least 90 billion barrels of oil waiting to be discovered there, and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas - some 22 per cent of the world's estimated undiscovered resources, equivalent to the entire hydrocarbon reserves of Kuwait.
That said, the region is not entirely new to prospectors. More than 400 oil and gas fields have already been discovered north of the Arctic Circle, between them accounting for some 40 billion barrels of oil and more than 1,100 trillion cubic feet of gas. By far the biggest is the North Slope, in Alaska, which includes the vast Prudhoe Bay field, which has disgorged some 11 billion barrels worth of its estimated 25 billion barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) since it was discovered in the late 1960s. There is also a string of producing fields at Snohvit, in the Norwegian side of the Barents Sea. But the discoveries are clustered together, and numberless tracts of ice and sea remain unexplored.
Much depends on economics. With an unimaginably harsh climate and a bare three-month drilling season, it can be several times as expensive to explore in Arctic regions as elsewhere. As a result, many companies hold licences in areas such as Greenland, but have not pursued them. The recent glut of gas, particularly from US shale, has also slowed developments, putting Russia's plan for a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant at Shtokman in the east Barents Sea on hold, for example.
Part of the reason Arctic exploration is so expensive is simply that it takes so long. Where the entire cycle from exploration to production in a relatively benign region such as the North Sea might take four years, in the Arctic the lead times stretch to more than a decade. [The Independent, 1/18/11, emphasis added]
Ice In Arctic Poses "Various Threats To Drilling Rigs And Crews." According to the New York Times:
After the BP accident in the gulf last year highlighted the consequences of a catastrophic ocean spill, American and Canadian regulators focused on the special challenges in the Arctic.
The ice pack and icebergs pose various threats to drilling rigs and crews. And if oil were spilled in the winter, cleanup would take place in the total darkness that engulfs the region during those months.
The waters of the Arctic are particularly perilous for drilling because of the extreme cold, long periods of darkness, dense fogs and hurricane-strength winds. Pervasive ice cover for eight to nine months out of the year can block relief ships in case of a blowout. And, as environmentalists note, whales, polar bears and other species depend on the region's fragile habitats. [New York Times, 2/16/11]


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-Superior image quality-Compact length-Superb value and performance-Handy 20mm focal length-3/4? (0.2 m) minimum focus-35mm equivalent: 30mm
Superior Image QualityThree aspherical lens elements correct distortions and aberrations. In particular, image quality in peripheral areas has been dramatically improved compared to previous lenses. The high resolution and excellent contrast assures richly detailed images free of distortion, making the lens an outstanding choice for a wide range of subjects such as casual snapshots to majestic landscapes.
Compact lengthMeasuring a mere 13/16 inches (20.4mm) the lens is 2mm shorter than the SEL16F28
High Quality ExteriorThe aluminum alloy lens barrel is inlaid into a molded-plastic component for a lightweight yet durable construction and features beautiful laser engraving of the product name and focal length for a stylish finish. The control ring allows for easy operation while the lens exudes a stylish appeal.
Circular ApertureThe SEL20F28 features seven aperture blades that form a near circle. This result in a pleasing defocused circular effect on the background of your image when the aperture is set wide open. The same type of internal stepping motor used for the focus drive is used for aperture actuation as well, that result in a smooth, low-noise aperture operation ideally suited to movie shooting.
Handy Focal LengthWith a 20mm focal length (35mm equivalent 30mm) and a bright maximum aperture of F2.8, the SEL20F28 is ideal for a variety of subjects from landscapes, interiors to casual snapshots.
Optics/LensAperture (Max.): f/2.8Aperture (Min.): f/16Focal Length (35mm equivalent): 30mmFilter Diameter: 49mmLens Groups-Elements: 6 groups, 6 elementsAF for Movie Capture: YesMinimum Focus Distance: 7.8" (0.2m)Aperture Blade: 7 blades (Circular aperture)Aspheric Elements: 3 aspheric surfaceDimensions (Max. Diameter x Length): 2-1/2 x 13/16" (62.6 x 20.4 mm)Direct Manual Focus: YesExterior Finish: MetalFocus Ring in AF Mode: No rotationInternal Motor: Yes (Stepping motor)Lens Weight: 2.4 oz (69g)Low Noise During Movie Capture: ExcellentMaximum Magnification: 0.12x (APS-C)Mount Material: MetalNon-rotating Focusing Ring: No rotation
Weights and MeasurementsDimensions (Approx.): 2-1/2 x 13/16" (62.6 x 20.4 mm)Weight (Approx.): 2.4 oz (69g)Weight(Approx) (Main unit only): 2.4 oz (69g)
Service and Warranty InformationLimited Warranty Term: 1 Year Parts & Labor


text:
North Korea: The World's Only Mafia Crime State
How North Korea Funds their Army, Nuclear Weapons Programme. and Small Group of Elite Cadre in Control
(Excerpts from an unpublished study of the criminal syndicates run by Kim Jong Il as central State policy)
(Copyright Nate Thayer (No republication in full or in part without express written permission of the author)
By Nate Thayer
North Korea is the only nation where it is central government policy to operate as a systematic criminal syndicate through a myriad of state controlled illicit activities. According to evidence compiled over a recent six month investigation, the North Korean government has, since at least 1974, run a worldwide network of diplomats, intelligence operatives, military, and other government officials, as well as state controlled front companies that use the rights and powers of a sovereign state to manage illegal operations worldwide.
North Korean government operatives have intentionally violated laws in at least 106 countries in over 500 incidents as it has repeatedly evaded and ignored a series of multi lateral agreements and increasingly stricter sanctions imposed by the United Nations, as well as the laws of sovereign nations around the world.
Together these criminal activities, strictly controlled and coordinated by the ruling Korean Workers Party of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK), have used thousands of North Koreans from school children to some of an estimated 200,000 political prisoners as forced labor in the opium poppy fields, to workers in the manufacturing plants processing heroin, methamphetamine, fake pharmaceuticals, counterfeit US currency, counterfeit foreign cigarettes, as well as a sophisticated secret weapons systems and nuclear weapons development program. To oversee the production, manufacture, transport, and export of these products, they have employed the full apparatus of state institutions. These have included the use of military vessels, intelligence officials, diplomats, their foreign embassies, and a complex web of more than a hundred state controlled front companies with networks around the world,
Increasingly, after years of international scrutiny of North Korean officials abroad and hundreds of seizures in dozens of countries, they are partnering with established international criminal syndicates in China, other Asian countries, Russia, the Middle East, Europe, and the United States to distribute these illicit commodities around the globe. Since at least 1976, dozens of government operatives on official missions out of North Korea, many travelling on formal diplomatic status, have been apprehended for possession and smuggling of counterfeit cigarettes, counterfeit pharmaceuticals, counterfeit U.S. dollars, narcotics including heroin, hashish, opium, methamphetamine, and cocaine, and large quantities of controlled pharmaceuticals. In addition North Korean diplomats have been arrested, detained, or expelled from numerous countries for other lucrative crimes such as smuggling of endangered species parts, African ivory, counterfeit CD's, and large amounts of untaxed alcohol and cigarettes hidden in diplomatic pouches, among other illicit goods. The products and their proceeds from these global operations have often moved around the world using officials travelling with diplomatic passports, who, under the Geneva accords of 1961, enjoy immunity from search, arrest, or prosecution.
As well, North Korean officials, and government controlled front corporations who operate internationally, and international crime syndicates working with the DPRK government, have been implicated in many countries as they distribute the goods and try to launder the proceeds from their illicit syndicates through international banking systems. Dozens of diplomats have been detained and expelled, some quietly, from countries in Africa, Asia, Russia, China, Europe, and South America. The activities of these state sponsored criminal enterprises have been identified in at least 106 countries on all continents except Antarctica, from 1976 through 2011, according to data compiled.
Revenue from this network in turn funds the elite of the Korean Workers Party, a repressive regime at home that defies U.S. and UN sanctions as it pursues a hostile foreign policy producing and exporting nuclear and sophisticated military technology that destabilizes countries and regions worldwide.
North Korea has been formally rebuked repeatedly by unanimous votes of the United Nations Security Council, the United States, and other affected countries for covertly evading a number of international prohibitions imposed on the isolated and secretive nation for developing and exporting sophisticated ballistic missile systems and nuclear technology. Some of the recipient nations, which are also banned from receiving such military technology, include Burma, Libya, Iran, and Syria. As well, North Korea has been exposed for violating repeated U.N sanctions prohibiting them from importing products for use in their programs of developing long range ballistic missiles, and weapons of mass destruction including the purchase of components for building chemical, biological and nuclear weapons systems.
It is believed that a substantial amount of the proceeds from their state sponsored criminal syndicates, which are under the direct control of the ruling Korean Workers Party and do not get distributed through the formal government budget, are used to covertly fund their nuclear and military programs . Since the late 1980's, they denied pursueing or possessing such technology, but more recently flaunt these capabilities, threatening to use them against declared enemies such as South Korea and the United States.
The proceeds from these illicit activities are estimated to equal 35-40% of the total revenue earned by the DPRK. Some estimate the illicit revenue to exceed 1 billion dollars a year. A significant portion of the revenue is suspected to fund the regimes banned nuclear weapons production and a sophisticated ballistic weapons systems. It is suspected that the proceeds, which by now may exceed $5 billion in reserves, have been variously shifted between banks in China, Singapore, Macau, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Austria, among other international accounts.
The criminal enterprises and the North Korean government agencies and officials who carry them out are coordinated by a highly secret unit, Bureau 39, (sometimes translated as 'Office' or 'Room' 39) under the authority of the ruling Korean Workers Party that reports directly to Kim Jung Il. The Bureau was created in 1974 specifically to raise hard currency to fund covert activities and as a source to reward elite party loyalists for continuing allegiance. It has offices throughout North Korea and more than 120 international front companies. It has 17 offices outside the DPRK, including China, Moscow, Macau, and Hong Kong. It's primary purpose is to coordinate production and distribution of a worldwide network of illegal products and collect the revenue for Kim Jung Il.
In recent years international organizations and sovereign states, particularly the United Nations and the U.S., have passed resolutions, laws, and executive orders to try to undermine the ability of North Korea to operate its global criminal enterprise, but to little avail.
It has been argued that aggressively confronting North Korea for it's criminal conduct as a mafia-like state, while trying to balance the pursuit of the higher international priorities of eliminating their capabilities to become a nuclear weapons power and supplier of nuclear technology, as well as exporter of sophisticated long range missile systems to dubious regimes around the globe, has created a conundrum for international negotiators, who fear that focusing on North Korean criminal enterprises will undermine the greater priority of securing military stability in one of the worlds most volatile and certainly most isolated and impenetrable nations.
For nearly two decades a series of established negotiating bodies served as a diplomatic forum engaging North Korea with other affected and concerned nations to provide a diplomatic solution to the threat of nuclear and sophisticated weapons development and proliferation. Although they were repeatedly met with broken promises and slow progress over a myriad of contentious issues, they maintained a dialogue and resulted in channels of verification that many analysts saw as essential in thwarting North Korea's desires for a nuclear weaponized military capability.
Those diplomatic efforts came to an abrupt halt in 2001, as the Bush adminstration chose a new course in confronting and pressuring the North Korean government.
In April 2005, North Korean Vice Minister Kim Kye-gwan warned, "[The United States] should consider the danger that we could transfer nuclear weapons to terrorists, that we have the ability to do so." Formal diplomatic talks deteriorated since 2001, coming to a complete halt in 2009. Diplomatic negotiations have been dormant since, the parties engaged in increasingly hostile and aggressive actions towards each other.
By 2011, international law enforcement in scores of nations, key affected countries such as the United States, Japan and South Korea, and International bodies such as the United Nations have repeatedly imposed sanctions, held diplomatic negotiations, and passed laws and mandated resolutions attempting to halt North Korea's role as a destabilizing force in the region and the world. The DPRK reaction has been to continue its illicit covert schemes and ratchet up an aggressive military posture. But the threat of a rogue state, now possessing nuclear weapons capability as well as an aggressive manufacturer and exporter of sophisticated ballistic missile technology, funded by a vast network of covert production and export of illegal goods, has only expanded.
Overview of Illegal Activities
Among the oldest, key criminal activities controlled by Bureau 39 is the production distribution and laundering of the world's highest quality counterfeit United States currency. In addition the bureau has managed the production and distribution of opium, heroin, and methamphetamine, billions of counterfeit brand name cigarettes, counterfeit pharmaceuticals, long range ballistic missiles, and the transfer of nuclear technology and expertise to other regimes, and building a nuclear weapons arsenal. Other illicit activities include state sponsored insurance fraud, money laundering, gold smuggling, taxable items smuggled through diplomatic officials, and the trade in protected species such as elephant ivory and Rhinoceros tusks.
On more than 100 occasions, all of these materials have been seized in the possession of North Korean diplomats or shown to have occurred. They are facilitated by government officials, government controlled ships, planes, and international trading companies that are front organizations controlled by North Korean government clandestine offices. They have resulted in the seizure, detention, expulsion, or arrest of North Korean government officials, or their associates, often using diplomatic passports, or these activities have been verified as occurring in at least 106 countries from 1976 through 2011.
Revenues from illicit state sponsored organized crime are, by their very nature, speculative at best. Annual revenues from counterfeit US currency are estimated at between 15 and 100 million US dollars, illegal drug manufacture and sale of heroin, opium, and methamphetamine have carried estimates as high as between 100 million to one billion dollars, counterfeit cigarette manufacture and sale at between 560 and 720 million dollars, and weapons, military components, nuclear technology, and missile sales at as much as 560 million dollars.
In 1976, two years after the creation of Bureau 39, North Korean officials began being apprehended around the world for engaging in criminal activity. Sweden, Norway, and Denmark expelled 17 North Korean diplomats, including the entire Norwegian diplomatic staff and two ambassadors, for the sale of drugs, untaxed alcohol and cigarettes.
In North Korea, where virtually all economic activity is controlled by the state, Bureau 39 handles all hard currency transactions, including some legal projects such as export of mushrooms, ginseng and proceeds from the handful of hotels where foreign visitors must stay in Pyongyang.
Travelling mainly under diplomatic passports, their illicit cargo has been seized in dozens of countries at an escalating rate that peaked in the late 1990's. Scores of North Korean government officials have been arrested, detained and expelled, illicit goods seized
in hundreds of incidents, occurring on every continent except Antartica for the last 35 years. Such criminal activity directly linked to the North Korean government has been documented in at least 57 countries since 1976.
Reports from numerous cases of North Korean state sponsored involvement in production, manufacture and distribution of illicit products began in the mid 1970's and gained momentum into an overwhelming pattern of a DPRK controlled government criminal conspiracy by the late 1990's. Arguably the most isolated, secretive, and impenetrable nation in the world, firm evidence has proven difficult to gather and more difficult to prove.
Operating outside the formal government structure, Bureau 39 is an office technically under the structure of the ruling Korean Workers Party Secretariat, which reports to the Central Committee of the Party. Its establishment to operate illicit activities included the purpose of funding the cash starved nation's military and nuclear development programs.
" North Korea's Central Committee Bureau 39 is an active participant in the criminal economy of the region with tentacles extending well beyond Asia," according to a study published in March 2010 by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. The PDRK operates what "is essentially criminal sovereignty whereby it organizes its illegitimate activities behind the shield of non-intervention while using the tools of the state to perpetrate these schemes abroad."
While outside the government structure Bureau 39 fully uses the state apparatus including the diplomatic services, intelligence agencies, military, shipping vessels and aircraft, and an estimated 120 foreign front companies, which themselves are constantly renamed or dissolved and their function replaced by another shell company. These companies are used to covertly launder the proceeds from illicit transactions through foreign bank accounts variously reported to be located in China, Macau, Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg, and Singapore, according to several studies, including Congressional testimony in March 2011.
Its most powerful entity is the Deasung General Bureau, which controls scores of foreign trading front companies and banks, and reports to the ruling KWP Organization and Guidance Department. They, in turn, report to Bureau 39.
In November 2010 the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Deasung General Bureau stating it "was owned or controlled by Office 39 of the Korean Workers Party. Office 39 is a secretive Branch of the government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea that provides critical support to North Korean leadership through engaging in illicit economic activities and managing slush funds and generating revenue for the leadership."
The U.S. Department of Treasury Department determined that the Korean Daesong General Trading Corporation was " facilitating North Korean trafficking in arms and related materiel; procurement of luxury goods; and engagement in certain illicit economic activities, such as money laundering, the counterfeiting of goods and currency, bulk cash smuggling and narcotics trafficking."
A confidential November 2010 UN Security Council Panel of Experts report, ordered to study North Korean compliance with UN Security Council resolutions responding to North Korean long range ballistic missile and nuclear bomb testing, had banned, among other things, North Korea from the export or import of nuclear technology and any weapons systems. The secret report was leaked in December 2010.
The 47 page document said "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea maintains a wide network of trade offices that work in close conjunction with its diplomatic missions overseas. These offices are charged with both procurement and developing select trade opportunities of interest to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's leadership, including arranging and handling its illicit trade and covert acquisitions," said the UN confidential report dated 10 November 2010. It continued: "While much of the country's illicit or covert acquisition activities are handled by these offices, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has also established links with overseas criminal networks to carry out these activities, including the transportation and distribution of illicit and smuggled cargoes. This may also include weapons of mass destruction, sensitive goods and arms and related materiel smuggling."
All figures and statistics on the DPRK are highly speculative and are often derived from teams of international and US law enforcement and intelligence analysts and technology. Some information comes from North Korean defectors. Other data has been compiled through the seizure of illicit goods in dozens of countries around the world. And still more evidence is provided by anecdotal press reports from various incidents involving law enforcement in nations spanning the globe. The United States and South Korea have taken the most active role in deciphering what transpires in what is arguably the most isolated, secretive, and impenetrable nation in the world. It is reported to use proceeds of the state sponsored criminal syndicate in its nuclear development program.
The North Korean government, through Bureau 39, are increasingly assisted and coordinate with established organized crime syndicates from China, Japan, and Russia, elsewhere in Asia, the United States, and Europe. They have cooperated with non-state terrorist organizations including the IRA, Hezbollah, and insurgencies in Sri Lanka and Nepal. And they have laundered proceeds from illicit activities through banking systems worldwide, including Macau, China, Switzerland, Austria, Hong Kong, Luxembourg and Singapore, according to US government, United Nations, other governments, and press reports.
In 2011, North Korea again faces severe food shortages. An estimated more than one million people died from famine in the 1990's. United Nations humanitarian agencies report that millions are suffering from malnutrition in 2011. The government provides minimal services to the population, controls all sectors of the economy and is ranked 179th in the world—dead last—in the Index of Economic Freedom, and regularly ranked as having one of the world's most egregious human rights records. It has refused to meet long standing international debt obligations, and together with sanctions imposed by the United Nations, finds it difficult to meet minimal standards to trade through normal international financial structures. While publicly appealing for international funds to stem another famine, with a population of only 23.9 million people, North Korea finances and maintains the 4th largest standing army in the world, with more than one million active duty soldiers and 4.6 million in reserve.
Throughout the 1990's until the US began imposing increasingly harsh sanctions in 2005, Macau served as a hub of laundering criminal proceeds through a series of North Korean front companies and cooperative banks and lax financial security in the gambling Mecca.
Counterfeit U.S. Money
In 1994, officials from a North Korean front company, Zokwang trading company, a direct subsidiary of Bureau 39, travelling on diplomatic passports, attempted to deposit 250,000 dollars in fake US dollars in a Macau bank and were arrested and expelled. It was one of many incidents that led to a September 2005 US Treasury Department action naming and freezing the assets of North Korean front companies, Macau banks, and North Korean officials.
Kim Jung Il, in his capacity as head of Bureau 39, first ordered counterfeit 100 dollar bills be produced in the 1970's through bleaching U.S. one dollar bills. The first counterfeit notes paid for covert terror campaigns against South Korea, such as the bomb explosion on a South Korean commercial plane killing all 155 civilian passengers in 1987 and the bombing of senior officials of South Korea, including President Chun Doo-Hwan in Burma in 1983 that killed four cabinet members and 13 other South Koreans .
The first detection of the North Korean "super note" was by a suspicious bank teller in the Philippines in 1989.
Since then hundreds of millions of dollars of the bills have appeared in dozens of countries around the world. Many North Korean officials have been seized in possession of the bills.
In South Korea counterfeit bills have increased there since North Korean fake U.S. dollars appeared in Hong Kong in early 2006. Days later China ordered banks to "increase vigilance" for fake U.S. bills.
By the late 1980's, as the economic crisis in the communist states imploded with the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea increased the production and sophistication of its counterfeit dollars.
Since the first counterfeit bills were manufactured, US government officials have documented 19 versions of the "super note", all they allege are improvements that are produced in the PDRK. It was in the late 1970's that North Korea purchased its intaglio printing presses from a Swiss company that sells strictly to governments.
They also bought special ink from the same Swiss company used by the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing nearly exactly the same color used by the US . As well, paper with a nearly identical percentage of cotton fiber as that used on U.S. notes is used in North Korean supernotes.
In 2004, a North Korean defector, interviewed by the BBC in South Korea, said. "We bought the best of everything - the best equipment and the best ink. But we also had the very best people, people who had real expertise and knowledge in the field. ….When government officials or diplomats travelled to south-east Asia they distributed the counterfeit notes mixed in with the real one's, at a ratio of about 50-50."
In October that year the FBI seizure of 300,000 dollars in super notes hidden among cargo on a ship originating in China arrived at the Newark, New Jersey port, marked the first evidence of US fake dollars from North Korea smuggled into the United States.
In 2005, the US launched a series of countermeasures against North Korea targeting the counterfeit program, money laundering related to drug trafficking and other illicit activities, including criminal indictments in the U.S. and sanctions against North Korean front companies and foreign banks operating in other countries.
It signified a change in US policy to avoid public condemnation of North Korea's government operated criminal syndicates for fear it would thwart the larger national interests of negotiating with the DPRK to halt it's production, distribution, and export of nuclear technology and sophisticated weaponry that was the ongoing focus priority of US foreign policy for more than a decade.
In September of 2005, the US imposed sanctions against North Korean front companies, individuals, and a bank in Macau for laundering counterfeit dollars and other proceeds from North Korean criminal enterprises.
A March 2006 study by the independent Congressional Research Service made a connection between revenues from counterfeit money and other illicit proceeds and the fueling of nuclear proliferation. "The earnings from counterfeiting also could be significant to Pyongyang, and may be used to purchase weapons technology….or even underwrite the DPRK's nuclear program."
The next month, April 2006, the U.S State Department made public accusations against the DPRK regime that their illicit trade was operating increasingly with networks of international organized crime. North Korean's "have been apprehended trafficking in narcotics and engaged in other forms of criminal behavior," concluded the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report released in March 2006, "including passing counterfeit U.S. currency."
That same month a Congressional Research Services report on North Korean Counterfeiting stated: "These have been carried out in league with criminal organizations around the world."
It added that revenue from criminal syndicates were essential to keeping the regime in power.
The United Nations and both the Bush and Obama administrations have shifted to a more confrontational policy regarding the PDRK, from negotiations on stopping the North Korean program for nuclear and missile development programs, to increased confrontation over their state sponsored criminal activity and financial sanctions directed to punish the North Koreans for weapons development .
Since President Clinton left office in January 2001 until the present, there has been a marked escalation of hostility between the two sides that has reached a complete breakdown in diplomatic negotiations over the development of the PDRK nuclear and other military program. The U.S. and the United Nations have since created laws, resolutions, and Presidential Executive Orders to mitigate the effectiveness of some of the North Korean international criminal network and its military programs of acquiring nuclear weapons and exporting sophisticated weapons......TO BE CONTINUED